Shelby, the talking dog?

We keep Shelby’s red wagon in the living room. It’s full of toys, half chewed up tennis balls, various bones, pieces of bark and any half shredded pieces of paper she felt were important enough to keep.

When she can’t find the “right” toy, ball, bone, shredded paper or piece of bark scattered around the house, she’ll hop over to her wagon and starts, “The search.” Her front paw in the wagon, her Farrah Fawsett tail wagging, she’ll search the wagon for the “just right toy” for the moment. She’ll usually finds something, jumps up in her wagon, grabs it, turns around and looks at us like, “Hey, help me out of my wagon!” And of course we both drop everything we’re doing and rush to help her down.

Saturday night she sprung something new on us. Front paw in the wagon, tail wagging, she gave us both the over the shoulder look, hopped down, sat down, looked calmly at Cindi and barked…once. Not a loud bark, just a bark telling Cindi she wanted her half green, half red tennis ball, now, please.

Cindi immediately went to the wagon, found the requested tennis ball and gave it to Shelby who hopped off as happy as she could be.

We both swear when she barked, it actually sounded like the word “ball.”